Lung Ultrasound Protocol and Quality Control of Image Interpretation Using an Adjudication Panel in the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Trial.

Objective: Lung ultrasound (LUS) is an alternative to chest radiography to confirm a diagnosis of pneumonia. For research and disease surveillance, methods to use LUS to diagnose pneumonia are needed.

Methods: In the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial, LUS was used to confirm a clinical diagnosis of severe pneumonia in infants. We developed a standardized definition of pneumonia, protocols for recruitment and training of sonographers, along with LUS image acquisition and interpretation. We use a blinded panel approach to interpretation with LUS cine-loops randomized to non-scanning sonographers with expert review.

Discussion: We obtained 357 lung ultrasound scans: 159, 8 and 190 scans were collected in Guatemala, Peru and Rwanda, respectively. The diagnosis of primary endpoint pneumonia (PEP) required an expert tie breaker in 181 scans (39%). PEP was diagnosed in 141 scans (40%), not diagnosed in 213 (60%), with 3 scans (<1%) deemed uninterpretable. Agreement among the two blinded sonographers and the expert reader in Guatemala, Peru and Rwanda was 65%, 62% and 67%, with a prevalence-and-bias-corrected kappa of 0.30, 0.24 and 0.33, respectively.

Conclusion: Use of standardized imaging protocols, training and an adjudication panel resulted in high confidence for the diagnosis of pneumonia using LUS.